Titus Welliver Going Deep on Bosch Will Convince You to Watch Bosch

The Deadwood alum reflects on politics, masculinity, and the Amazon cop noir's first season.

Most Popular

Amazon Studios

AuthorCreated with Sketch.

By Titus Welliver

Mar 28, 2015

Straight-to-streaming television is a godsend for the binge-watcher. Sites like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu drop hardy servings of programming to be devoured at will. The only drawback: quantity. There's so much to watch and so little time (at least until the next big premiere). So while Amazon Studios's Bosch may have been on your radar when it premiered last February, it's possible you missed it completely. We're here to say: correct that. Based on Michael Connelly's detective novel series, Bosch stars Deadwood and LOST costar Titus Welliver as the title character, a righteous cop juggling a gruesome cold case , a serial killer pursuit, and his own trial for the murder of an innocent suspect. It's a hard-boiled noir for a society reckoning with the events of Ferguson, MO. Classic, yet pressing. Easily binged.

Bosch was a huge hit for Amazon, quickly becoming one of the platform's most watched series and earning a second season greenlight within a week. But sift through Internet chatter and it's hard to find the supportive fervor. Not terribly surprising; Bosch is too cool, composed, and "adult" to spawn memes and demand Reddit scrutiny. The show has a lot on its mind—and so does Welliver. To prove it, we asked the star to reflect on Bosch, the man and the series. Below, Welliver unpacks the show's relationship to crime fiction, politics, crime fiction, and modern masculinity. If you're not sold on the show yet, this should do the trick.

Here's Titus Welliver in his own words, as told to Matt Patches:

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

We all know that in this country, [recent events] like Ferguson and New York go on all the time. The difference between what happens with Harry Bosch is that he is pursuing a guy that he believes to be hinky and wrong, follows him into an alley, the guy goes for a weapon, and Bosch shoots the guy in self-defense. Cops may taze people, but they don't kneecap them like they do in the movies. If you've got a guy and he pulls a gun, it really comes down to response time. What we saw in the two cases are such egregious acts committed by police officers, but that's not Harry. Harry's not a racist; Harry's not a guy who would profile someone based on their ethnicity or their sexual orientation. He doesn't give a shit. If you break the law, you break the law. It doesn't matter if you have a proclivity for dressing up and doing things with a Shetland pony. If you break the law, if you take a life, he'll find you. He'll find you and he'll will work it until he finds you.

Most Popular

When we were in our process of shooting our show, the events occurred. We would be very remiss to completely ignore what happened in Ferguson. So I think the show is smart without having to build something around it to address it. Of course as that has come up, you can be sure that command in every police department across this country has said, 'This can't be happening.." But we're seeing it all too often. The reason that it's out front now is because people have video cameras and people come forward. This has been going on since the first stone badge was hammered out by some Cro-Magnon, slapped on a guy's fur, and said, "Okay, you're the guy who's going to handle stuff." But the difficulty is that we have this social contract with law enforcement, which is, we delegate the responsibility of our safety and care to you, and so you do what you need to do in order to keep us safe. If you cross the line, we don't want to know about it. Or, if we find out about it, God help you. But we're talking about such deeply egregious stuff, going all the way back to Rodney King. You've got people that have been incarcerated, falsely been coerced into confessing to crimes that they didn't commit, and spend lengthy periods incarcerated only to be exonerated. It's a serious, serious problem. That said, I have a lot of friends who are cops. They're law-abiding citizens, and they're good human beings, and they do their jobs. But we have—including in our government, I might add — a contract that we've delegated this responsibility to, they break the rules, and drag us into wars under false pretenses and things. There is a lot of dishonesty on the planet.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I've played a few cop characters in my career. I've played cops from Boston and New York, and they're all very, very different. There's procedural stuff that is somewhat the same, but the dress, the attitude, and the decorum is all different. We have technical advisors, three LAPD detectives, homicide detectives, that are on the set. And I spend time with them. They're longtime friends and colleagues of Michael Connelly's. And they were very helpful to me. This is something that I really noticed, because often the depiction of detectives is that these are kind of hard-hearted, disconnected characters. Something that I really observed in that when I would have conversations with them, that in the re-telling of certain cases, there was an emotional connection. These are guys that would not be overtly emotionally demonstrative in their re-telling of the story, but you'd see an emotional connection. They give a shit. They all count. And that also speaks volumes, because they say, "Of course." And Michael has affection for these guys, and goes to them because that's how they approach the job. They don't approach it as, "Eh, I've got to punch the clock. We've got a body and let me see what I can do." These guys have also worked cold cases, and one of them actually has the Black Dahlia file, because that's still an open case.

A lot of cops tell me that they love that [Harry Bosch] doesn't suffer fools. He really doesn't. And what he's focused on is doing the job. He is not a political animal whatsoever. He's not a guy who's into small talk and bullshit. He's really about solving the crime, and where you really see Harry's moral compass is when he is compromised, where the character of Brasher [Annie Wersching]—he's having a relationship with her—he sees that she gives a totally false statement. And he can't back her play, because it didn't happen. It becomes a moral issue for him. He's invested with this woman emotionally, and this isn't a guy who opens himself up to people. But the bottom line is, what he says is, "I don't want to see you hurt yourself with a statement that's not true," because he knows that there's the blowback. If you go down that path, then it defines your destiny, to a certain degree. You'll always be a person who will compromise integrity and truth just to do it. Harry's not a guy who would plant a weapon on somebody to get a conviction, and he's not a cop who would beat a confession out of a guy. What he would do is he would grind and do the work until he got it. But I think he has a good moral compass. Cops love the character of Bosch, because he's also a smart-ass, and he's irreverent. He says stuff to commanders that I'm sure every cop would love to say at one point, particularly if they're dealing with some sort of a bureaucratic, political jerkoff who's just looking to take the next exam to get a promotion, whereas Harry's a guy who's on the street, in it. And he doesn't have respect for people like that.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The thing that so deeply appealed to me about the show was the sort of haunted quality and vulnerability of Bosch. He certainly has this hard-as-nails edge, but beneath that veneer is a profoundly troubled and haunted guy. And, of course, that backstory unfolds. But it's never too much information—we don't spell it out, but you see that. And to me, it came off the page in reading the script. Harry's a guy of very few words. It's not that he's monosyllabic; he's a very intelligent guy. But he's an observer. What presented a really interesting challenge was, how do you project that kind of inner dialogue, that internal monologue, without dialogue and without having it be either overly morose or saccharine? I'm so glad that both [creator] Eric [Overmyer] and Michael wanted to really embrace that.

Most Popular

There are many, many scenes where we find Harry alone, and there is no scripted dialogue. But because of the structure of the narrative, the audience is experiencing that classic voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall [perspective]. The audience experiences the case and life with Harry in real time. I think that makes for more compelling storytelling. They're not afraid of those silences.

There's a flashback sequence to when Bosch is twelve years old and his mother is going out for the night and it's the last night that Harry sees his mother as a young boy. I may be biased, but my son Quinn played that part so beautifully. Then we fade out from that to Harry alone in his house, looking over the murder book from his mother's case. And yet there's no dialogue with the adult Bosch. We see Harry Bosch at the age of twelve, and his mother is a prostitute—she's not a street-walker, per se—but here is a child who is loved and who is cared for, and the tragedy of that loss and how it's informed the man that he's become, and it's informed everything. That's why he is the advocate for the victims. Everybody counts or nobody counts. And there is a bit of dialogue where he says to his lieutenant, "I'm not ashamed of my mother. She was on her own; she took good care of me; she did the best she could." And he said, "Because of what she did for a living, nobody gave a shit. And that's why the person that killed her is still in the wind." And I just think that speaks volumes about what kind of moral fiber this guy has.

People can piss and moan about that, and they can say, "Oh, the damaged guy, he's listening to jazz and he's smoking and he's drinking." You go, "Well, that's what these people do." What do you want me to do? What are we going to do, give him a fuckin' lollipop and add all this stuff to him? He's an antihero. This is a guy who's totally flawed and very human, and he is damaged, but that's what makes him appealing and accessible to audiences is that he's not a guy driving a black Camaro and bangin' chicks left and right.

I'm a huge fan of noir, from [Raymond] Chandler to Nelson Algren to [James] Ellroy. I love all of those films, from Kiss Me Deadly to The Friends of Eddie Coyle. I love James Higgins. If this was network television, they would distill it heavily. The decision would be made to make him more likeable, to make him slick. And he's not. He's not a slick guy. He's really out of step with time. But what he does he does really well, because he's a hunter. He's an observer. And he's relentless, and he's a grinder, and I love the fact that this is a character who takes nothing for granted. Even when it's laid before him, he doesn't trust it.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The one thing that I deviated from the books is that Harry Bosch always wears a suit. I felt, in my interpretation, that Harry was a guy that, because he breaks from the rank and file of things, that this is a guy who doesn't spend a lot of time on what he's going to wear every day. He's not a suit-and-tie guy. When he goes to do a notification, and when he goes to court, he dresses appropriately. But the rest of the time, Harry's a guy that rolls out of bed and just grabs the shirt and a pair of pants. He's pulled together, but he's not wearing Florsheim shoes. He wears Red Wing boots and Blundstones, and he just squeaks under the radar. They wanted to make him, not rumpled, but a [style] where you kind of go, "Okay, he's pulled together, but you're not paying attention to what he's wearing."

[Grappling with masculinity] is a double-edged sword. We're no longer necessarily trying to create a generation of men that are purely driven by machismo and sexual conquest, but that have a good moral compass and a good center, and they know how to treat women with respect, and they're comfortable with their emotional life, and they're able to cry when they watch Babe. I watch To Kill a Mockingbird every year, because it's one of my favorites. I've seen that film probably seventy-five to a hundred times. I cry in the same places every time. I'm always prepared. And it never changes. I always think, "Oh, this year I'll watch it and I've just seen it so many times that I won't cry." So that speaks volumes to Harper Lee, and also to the realization of that film, that it's so profound. But again, the definition of masculinity— and we have all these phrases, "metrosexual"—I think it's kind of a load of shit, to be honest with you. My thing is, I don't care how tough a guy is. I'm really interested in their moral fiber and what the substance of who they are is and what they give a shit about.

I have two sons and a daughter, and I'm a little bit of an old-school guy. I've always felt that it was important to teach a kid how to whittle a piece of wood with a knife and have respect for a knife. I taught my kids how to shoot guns, because I think it's important that they have respect for firearms and that they are not titillated or mystified or drawn to those things, that they understand that they have real power and that those things are destructive. And also that they read good books and watch good films and listen to good music—mbue our kids with some sort of intellectual breadth so that they're not limited to trends. I'm a lover of pop culture; I'm such a creature of sixties and seventies pop culture. So I never deny them that, although I wish that pop culture of today had a little bit more substance to it. I feel like some of it is mean-spirited and mindless. There's consequence. And it's not this kind of smarmy, lowbrow, snotty self-entitlement shit, which I really can't bear.

There I go, on my soapbox.

Bosch Season One is currently available to stream on Amazon Instant Video.